


What Dreams May Come

by YourPalYourBuddy



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Not Beta Read, Not Really Character Death, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Second Person Narrator, Steve's Pov, but kinda? Maybe?, it's polyamorous, not gonna lie you guys I don't know how to do the relationship section of this, so I dunno, teen and up for a suggestive moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 07:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11504535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourPalYourBuddy/pseuds/YourPalYourBuddy
Summary: While you are dead, you dream.The cold climbs steadily and surely over your limbs but before it overtakes everything, you lie down for the last time on the table, place the shield on your chest, and fold your arms. This is how your father looked just before your shovelful of dirt splintered against his casket.There's no one here to arrange you like that, so you're saving them a step. If they ever find you.But the water's at your ankles now, curling over your boots and soaking your socks — at your calves, ripping through a bullet hole in your pants — at your chest, closing around your heart —And you close your eyes, and while you are dead, you dream.___________________Post CA:TFA, pre Marvel's The Avengers. Steve's POV.





	What Dreams May Come

________________________

 

While you are dead, you dream.

The cold climbs steadily and surely over your limbs but before it overtakes everything, you lie down for the last time on the table, place the shield on your chest, and fold your arms. This is how your father looked just before your shovelful of dirt splintered against his casket.

There's no one here to arrange you like that, so you're saving them a step. If they ever find you.

But the water's at your ankles now, curling over your boots and soaking your socks — at your calves, ripping through a bullet hole in your pants — at your chest, closing around your heart —

And you close your eyes, and while you are dead, you dream.

____________

  
There is a girl with brown hair in your dream and you think you loved her when you were alive. She looks at you and her lipstick's smudged a little like she's rubbed her mouth on her sleeve. Maybe she's welcoming you to hell, or heaven, or the ice where he fell before you had. Purgatory, maybe.

_Steve,_ she says, and drags her hand under her eyes. She catches the red on her lips by accident and it smears a little across her cheek.  
This smear hurts you worse than the ice. You try to say her name but she blurs out of sight before you can. You don’t know that you remember it anyway.

____________

  
Everything is dark blue-green-grey and faded like the old sewage pipes at Camp Lehigh. You think, maybe, there's some light filtering through your dream from somewhere, but even so. Nothing lives around here.

____________

  
She's back again. She holds a photograph out to you and you take it, even though your hands are insubstantial, and you both study it a moment. It's a boy with dark hair and laughing eyes leaning against a mud-stained tank. Beauty and dirt and possibility braided together in one instance. You think you loved him too, when you were alive.

He fell though. The girl's eyes are soft and teary and maybe you both loved him, but he fell and you didn't reach him.

____________

  
It’s nice to be weightless. Since the photograph you've been testing the extent of your nonexistence and so far, as best you can tell, it's like swimming through that rain puddle that always formed just between the sidewalk and your fire escape. It's clear and a little sideways, but splashing through half formed memories feels like catching melting snow on your tongue.

She has another photo today. She gives it to you while you think about snow and when you do, white flakes drift down from somewhere high up.

This one is you and the boy underneath a tree. You have a book open, and if you look closely you can see it's filled with tiny scratchy drawings. He's looking at you like you make the snow fall from the sky.

On the back of the photograph is this: _Steve and Bucky, Normandy._ The girl taps the names like you should remember them. They echo in an emptiness, but neither name stays. 

____________

 

You're dead, you know this, so you're only somewhat worried that you don't remember most things. Your mother was Sarah but you don't remember your name, or the girl's, or his. You should. She's been trying to help you put pieces together and disappointment rests just out of sight in her eyes when you can't remember.

The dead don't remember. You know this from a dusty class on Greek mythology. They are shadows of themselves, and now you are too. She doesn't understand that; she looks at you like she expects more. She doesn’t see that this is all there is. You are dead and dreaming and this is all.

____________

  
This is all, but this photograph rings loud when you touch it. It's like you've stomped in that rain puddle and sent water everywhere.

You are dead and dreaming but why is it you remember when you danced with her? When you danced with them both, bright and breathless with your own brilliance.  
Her hair spreads over your shoulder in the photo and his hand holds yours and your arms are around them both and none of you could be touched. Not by this cold that numbs your arms and legs and chest, not by any guns or knives.

You were invincible, you all were, but you are dead now.

She looks hopeful but you shake your head. You are dead now. Maybe it's selfish, but you'd like to be dead a little while.  


____________

_Steve._

She's trying to talk you back to yourself but she's in your head; you will the music you all danced to to grow louder, and it drowns her out.

Even so your body is cold for the first time since you crashed. As soon as you think this she hears it, and her mouth relaxes.   
  
You're ready for her this time, when she comes back. You have no photographs but you've thought up a wall topped with wire like the trenches in your war.

Even sitting behind it you can hear her calling out _Steve!_ You don't respond. 

____________

 

This is in your mind, so you imagine blankets and pillows and two mattresses to settle into your trench. One bed you set outside, just in case. You've given this bed the warmer of the two blankets.

It feels like home and like you've destroyed home all at once, somehow. It doesn't make sense. All you know is this isn't real so it doesn't matter much anyway.

You focus your efforts on dissolving, becoming nothingness. Tiredness creeps into your muscles and tendons, circles around that ache in your right knee from when you were fifteen, and lies down alongside the cold.

The boy from the photo stares at you sullenly from over the trench wall, but when you start to speak he frowns and disappears.

____________

 

You can’t wake up within your own mind but you realize, suddenly, that faded pictures line the ground of your trench. She must have scattered them while you were ebbing away.

There are photographs everywhere now. The dark haired boy laughs up at you through the film, and it’s not until the girl outside calls you that you manage to control your breathing.

____________

 

Her name is Peggy. You hurt your knee when you were fifteen and her name is Peggy. You say, _Peggy,_ and she takes your hand and squeezes and there are tears in her eyes.

_Steve,_ she says. Peggy touches up her lipstick with a finger and says your name again. Something slots into place in your chest.

____________

 

You’re dead and dreaming but you’re remembering now, and your memories are grey like that puddle. Peggy sips a hazy, watery cup of tea while you sift through bleary images.

You’re still not sure how objects work here, in this inbetween. But she holds her immaterial cup like she used to while you were alive; you match this to a short clip of her leaving a lipstick print on the rim of a mug of whiskey while the dark haired boy presses a bloody bandage to her arm. His mouth is a thin line, and it’s an expression you recognize. He’s used it a lot on you.

In your memory she’s saying, _Shouldn’t have left my knife at base,_ and the boy says, _You’re damn right._

Real Peggy says, _That left a scar._ She rolls her sleeve up over her bicep and there’s a pinkish gouge biting into her skin. She pulls out a slightly transparent packet of cigs, lights one, and quirks a smile around it. _I was out for a week, remember?_

You say, _Phillips bought you chocolate._ It was a golden brown package with real sugar. _You gave us some when he wasn’t looking._

She smiles with her cigarette poking out the corner of her mouth.

____________

 

Real Peggy and Dream Peggy overlap now in your mind and, on some level, this doesn’t make sense. Both Peggys are dream Peggys technically — you are dead, but this is a dream. Isn’t it?

You line up the photographs on the apartment floor you shared with him. The trenches disappeared around the time you remembered her name, and you haven’t had time to think about why.

Or, you might have, but you haven’t thought about it. Time doesn’t really work here, so you had it and you didn’t.

Thinking about time makes your head hurt so you stop. And he’s looking up at you from the images on the ground.

Across the room Dream Peggy touches up her victory rolls in strange, grainy lighting while Real Peggy sits on a swing suspended from the ceiling. It feels out of place here, but you don’t know enough to say why.

Real Peggy says, _You took most of those._ She points at the pictures in your hands. You can’t feel them. _They’re of him, mostly. I took the ones of both of you together._

Dream Peggy laughs at something she reads in a letter, still in that slanted lighting. Real Peggy looks at her and then at you and then shrugs. _Poorly written love letter,_ she says. _I’m horrible, I know. I shouldn’t have laughed._

You press your fingertips against your temples. No pressure registers. _You got a lot of them,_ you say, then pause, forehead creased. She observes you like she knows what you’re thinking.

She says, gently, _Steve?_

And you know she’s just in your head but even that doesn’t make it easy to look at her. _Did you get mine? I just remembered…_

Peggy says, _Yes,_ and you don’t say anything. You both watch as Dream Peggy opens another letter and sits down on the vanity seat, hard. She raises a trembling hand to her lips.

Real Peggy says, _I got them._

____________

 

A minute or an age or the blink of an eye later you ask, _Why isn't he here? He should be here. Where is he?_

You and Real Peggy are outside now but submerged in the same blue-green-grey light as when you first woke up. Or when you seemed to have woken up the first time, anyway. It’s fluid like being underwater, and cold light ebbs and flows around you both.

_Where is who?_ Real Peggy asks. She lights another cig, but when she exhales there’s no smoke. It hits you, suddenly, that she’s avoiding your eyes.

A photograph materializes, the one of him smiling against the smeared tank. You hold to her without feeling it at all. She inhales another drag instead of taking it.

Her non answer makes your heart falter. He should be here. She knows that, doesn’t she? _Peggy? Where is he?_

Real Peggy stubs out her cig and says, _I don’t know._

A new photograph appears behind the first. It’s a reaching hand, set stark against a winter abyss, and your heart slows to almost nothing. He fell and you couldn’t reach him.

You think you’re crying. Real Peggy catches your tear on her thumb before sliding her hand around to the back of your neck and pressing your foreheads together.

She _shhs_ you in a low voice, running her fingers through your hair. Phantom sensations distract you from the fact that you can’t feel anything.

____________

 

Maybe you aren’t dead. You’re remembering better now. You still don’t know his name, though. If you loved him when you were alive, you should know it, shouldn’t you?

Grainy, Dream Peggy dances in her red dress and he stands beside her. It feels like he’s looking at you through a thin sheet of glass. And then there are two of you; Dream You steps through the glass and you see yourself kiss him, and then her, and then you leave with them both.

Your mind supplies the rest: fumbled undressing, him tripping over his pants and them both unbuttoning your shirt; a bed, sheets half torn off; blankets kicked down, spilling onto the floor; Peggy, cheeks flushed, you over her while he kisses you over the edge; his stubble rough against your mouth, his name on your tongue, while she feels you both.

A hand appears on your shoulder. Real Peggy says, _Do you remember?_

His name is Bucky, and you loved them both. You say, _Yes._

____________

 

You hear him before you see him, and his voice is scratchy and hoarse like he’s been yelling for a long, long time.

_You don’t know me anymore, is why. Neither of you do. Hard to name what you don’t know, isn’t it?_

Real Peggy looks at you, frowning. And here he is, now, leaning against something indistinct, his arms crossed. He kicks at the ground. It’s covered by the strange watery light again, and some of it flashes over his nose.

His face is darker than it used to be, or than how you think it used to be. He isn't smiling like he is in all the photos. You think this and Peggy mouths, in response, _Shadowed._ It’s like she’s read your mind. And then you remember they’re only in your mind.

You are dead and you are dreaming, that’s all.

Bucky rasps, _You’re not dead,_ and Real Peggy lights another cig.

You say, _What?_

Bucky and Real Peggy glance at each other and even though it's in your head you can't read that look. It's a familiar one, though. They shared it so often when you were alive.

_You are alive,_ Bucky says again. Real Peggy passes him her cigarettes and he lights it, all the while holding your gaze. _You are alive, Steve, and so am I._

You frown now. Real Peggy says, _They saw you fall, Buck. I read the report._

He just shrugs. _There's no use telling me. I'm not the dreamer,_ he says, and this time the smoke from his exhale breaks against your face.

____________

 

Bucky’s with you both more often now. Real Peggy gets another teacup from somewhere and you fold your arms as they look through the photographs together. Some of them they hand you, and these you still cannot feel.

The cold is still there though. You see it when Bucky breathes out; it clings to his breath and crystallizes. When this happens he still looks at you like you make the snow fall except now he looks like he's only feeling the cold.

He doesn't stay long, never does. When he blinks out of existence, you and Real Peggy sit and argue about what he meant by them not knowing him. You don't remember everything yet but you grew up with him, and she loved him too, and you know him. You must know him.

____________

 

Dream Peggy and Dream Bucky sit grainily together in the mess with full plates, but neither of them are eating. Bent so close together as they are, it's almost difficult to tell whose hair is whose. You think suddenly that they're very similar, and Real Peggy throws you a look.

_What?_

She just raises her eyebrows and shakes out her newspaper. It takes you a moment — or does it, if time doesn't work here? — to realize all the pages are blank.

Dream Bucky says, _It's getting worse,_ and Dream Peggy takes his arm.

_Stark, or no?_ Dream Bucky shakes his head. Dream Peggy says, _We should tell someone._

This conversation you don't remember at all. Real Bucky looks up from where he's cleaning a rifle, expressionless.

Dream Bucky says, _Not yet. It's not as bad as that yet._

_But it could be soon,_ Dream Peggy says. She twirls a cig around her fingers. _And then what will we tell Steve?_

You look at the real ones of them now but neither meets your eyes. Dream Bucky pushes hair out of his face and shakes his head, and then he and Dream Peggy fade away.

____________

 

Real Peggy and Real Bucky try to say something to you but you force yourself back into your apartment. It's furnished how it was before he moved in.

Something happened to him and she knew about it and didn't tell you. The fact of that twists sharp underneath your ribs.

____________

 

Today — or a moment later, or a decade, or seven — you run your hands over the floor of the apartment, and your hand sinks through the wood.

This hasn’t happened before. Real Peggy’s cigarettes are insubstantial, but that’s not new; the landscape, though. That’s been solid from the beginning. This you’re sure of.

Through your window Dream Bucky shoulders a rifle while Dream Peggy presses a lipsticked smile to his cheek, and you wonder if they were ever going to tell you. The skin under his eyes is purpley-grey and you should’ve known then, really, that something was wrong, should’ve known it like you know to breathe. Dream Peggy pulls away and Dream Bucky shudders.

Peggy knew. This version of Peggy did, anyway — the Peggy in your mind knew. Separating all the Peggys throbs painfully in your brain.

_We’re all in your head,_ Real Peggy says quietly. _You’ve known that for awhile, I think._ Real Bucky takes her hand and yours and you feel no pressure from his fingers.

_Stop,_ you say. You are dead and dreaming.

Real Bucky says, _You aren’t._ His frown softens.

_Why didn’t I remember, then, if I’m not?_

They say, together, _I don’t know._

They wouldn’t know. They’re in your head.

____________

 

You should be panicking now but all you are is cold, and the knowledge doesn’t so much shatter you as slip quietly in your lungs with your next inhale. The sky is blue, your name is Steve. Bucky grew up with you and you first kissed him that night on the roof back home. Peggy’s hair takes hours to do, you’ve helped her before, and they’re all in your mind.

You’ve known for awhile, you think.

Peggy offers a theory and this time you hear your phrasing in her mouth. _We’re manifestations. You tricked yourself into dreaming and this is how you’re waking yourself up._

You’re not dead then. _Just dreaming,_ Bucky supplies. He taps his fingers on a photograph of himself, his expression neutral.

_No more need for Real and Dream anymore?_ Peggy asks.

You say, _I don’t know the difference anymore._

____________

 

_The World Expo, huh?_ Bucky says. The watery light filters over his face while fireworks explode in the background. A particularly loud one goes off just then, and you jump.

_It’s where everything changed._

_I thought everything changed when you both met me,_ Peggy says, one eyebrow raised. You smile. Bucky rolls his eyes.

_We wouldn’t’ve met you without this,_ you say. _I wouldn’t’ve become this._ Bucky presses his lips to your temple and lingers. It would be reassuring, if he was there. If you could feel his lips.

You’re feeling just a little warmer though; it spreads from your chest to your limbs and sends pricks of pain through your muscles. It feels as though you’ve not used them in years.

Peggy wears a strange expression, one that’s half sorrow and half relief. Bucky slings his arm around her shoulder and pulls her close.

The fact that she’s a manifestation means you don’t ask what’s the matter. She tells you anyway: _Steve. You need to wake up._

Bucky runs his hands through your hair while Peggy looks at you sadly. The fact that you can feel his hands panics you, twists around your chest and tightens. You say, _I don’t want to._

The warmth seeps along your arms, subtly heating your veins and tendons as it does. When Peggy squeezes your hand, you feel it.

_You have to,_ she says, and this time you know it too. It comes from deep below your sternum. _They need you._

It's in your chest now, the warmth; now, when you inhale, your breaths expand your lungs and your lungs flood your blood with air. You can feel this, too. You can tell your blood is warming up.

_If I wake,_ you say. They both look at you, and suddenly your words catch against a knot in your throat.

Bucky brushes something off your cheek and your skin sparks at the contact. _Eyelash,_ he says quietly.

_If I wake,_ you say again. You look at Peggy helplessly.

_We won't be the same as we were,_ she says, her voice soft. _You cannot let yourself have us here, in your mind, if you wake._

There's a spot on her nose that's just this side of transparent, and beyond, through the glass, looks white. You wonder if anything grows there and the spot swallows away her cheek too.

_You'll have to find out for the three of us, Steve,_ Bucky says. He seems more shadowed now.

_I don't want to._

It's lighter and it's going to swallow you, too. On the other side of the glass you hear — a baseball game. It's familiar.

You look at them now, Peggy with light streaming through her body, Bucky smudged by charcoal. Beauty and dirt and possibility.

You close your eyes. _I have to go._

Peggy kisses you.

Bucky whispers, _Wake,_ and you fall through the glass into the light.

________________________

**Author's Note:**

> This may be a little confusing, I won't lie; I'll do my best to clarify anything in the comments if you've got any questions. Thanks for reading!  
> I'm on tumblr, [come say hi :)](http://untiltheendofthelinebuck.tumblr.com)


End file.
